| Grenland Group has a vision of preventing all injuries, accidents, and mistakes, to make their workplaces as safe as possible. Terje Kalbakk is Grenland Group’s Vice President of HSE. He shares his thoughts on health, safety, environment, and free time in this candid interview. “At Grenland Group, we focus on continuously improving HSE and QA,” tells Kalbakk. “We aim to provide a save and secure workplace, and my task is to contribute by facilitating the best possible conditions to achieve our goals”. What Is the Real Objective of HSE Work? Kalbakk tells that it is important to understand the objective of HSE work if you want to maintain your focus over time. “HSE can easily become a cliché and an empty acronym used in corporate speeches. For us, HSE means much much more. We want each and every employee to get health, safety, and environment under their skin. We have set up good control systems that dictate how to achieve this in practice. Our continuous focus is on transforming systems into practical action. This means ensuring that colleagues and collaboration partners get home from work safely – every day – to their families and hobbies,” tells Kalbakk. “I myself have many hobbies and I wouldn’t want an accident in the workplace to prevent me from doing what I enjoy – at work or in my free time.” One of Kalbakk’s hobbies is singing in a choir. The choir is called Swinglett and performs swing music. Kalbakk has been in the choir for more than 20 yeas and has made a lot of good friends over the years. “The choir both energises and inspires me,” tells Kalbakk. “After a long work-week, it is important to have some variation in your life and, for me, singing in the choir and fellowship with the singers and musicians is important. For others, activities like hiking and camping, hunting and fishing, or participating in sports fill the same need. However, there is no answer key; you need to determine what will provide you with healthy variation from your working life yourself.”  HSE Is about Having Several Legs to Stand on Kalbakk believes that it is important to admit that people need several legs to stand on, beyond their working life. “It is important to achieve good results at work, but other things are also meaningful. If you have a balanced relationship between work and free time, you will perform better at work,” asserts Kalbakk. “HSE is about looking after the whole person,” tells Kalbakk. It Is Important to Be Visible and Present Grenland Group is a full service engineering, acquisitions, and construction contractor, with operations at 13 locations in Norway, as well as in China and Malaysia. The company has nearly 1200 employees.
Grenland Group is also using the Trainingportal Publisher for internal production of e-learning courses and verification tests. |